Shake Off (12 page)

I
nside the bookshop I pretended to peruse a book on what was called the “Arab–Israeli Conflict.” It wasn’t a conflict, it was an occupation. Indeed Abu Leila always referred to it as a colonization by the West.

“The idea that there’s a war on is a myth, Michel,” he’d once said. “It implies two equal powers fighting on equal terms.” He puffed on a Turkish cigarette. “This David and Goliath idea is part of the mythology, a mythology that only involves white Jews, by the way.” I don’t know why this should have come into my head at that particular moment, when I had what I believed to be the competition on my tail, except that I was in a bit of a David and Goliath situation myself. I put the book back on the shelf and went up the escalator to the next floor. Near to where I got off I pulled out a heavy book of photographs on the Vietnam War. I stood facing the top of the escalator, where I could see the people coming off over pictures of the remains of napalm-burnt villages. I would only be visible when they appeared near the top of the escalator and would be so close that they would have to be very careful to avoid looking startled. Surveillance operatives try to avoid eye contact, but sometimes it is difficult to do without being obvious and giving themselves away. If they do make eye contact with the target then they have to be pulled from the team, as they might be recognized next time.

A couple of people came off the escalator and paid me no heed beyond a glance. Then a familiar head of shiny dark hair appeared, then Helen’s pretty face. Just behind her was the slack unshaven face of her tutor Zorba, or Niki, or whatever the fuck he was called. Helen went bright red when she saw me and he went pale. Stepping off the escalator, Helen spoke with exaggerated gaiety.

“Michel! What are you doing here?”

As if I had been banned from bookshops. Her neck became flushed as in lovemaking. I ignored the Greek, who moved over to a section of books. He was out of earshot but still in my peripheral vision, so able to see us. I was conflicted: I didn’t want to be seen with Helen by my pursuers, but just as equally I didn’t want to see her out with Zorba.

“We’re just getting a couple of books on Turkey,” she said. He pretended to study the back of a book but smoothed his hair back self-consciously. I looked at my watch.

“I thought we were meeting for lunch,” I said. Her embarrassment, which had been fading, was renewed with a fresh reddening. Her face told me she’d forgotten, but all I could think was that someone could come up the escalator at any second and see us talking. “Will I see you later?” I asked, then, unable to stop myself, “or will you be reading to each other all afternoon?” Helen’s eyes brightened with anger, but before she could reply I saw the top of a head behind her on the escalator so I turned my back on her and walked away fast.

I was so angry when I left through the side entrance of Foyles that I crossed the narrow road too fast and bumped into a woman as she turned from a shop window. Instinctively I apologized, holding onto her arm to steady her before realizing it was one of the female operatives. In my rage I’d completely forgotten about her. She had a form-fitting flesh-colored earpiece in her left ear, much as a deaf person might have, and a similarly colored wire ran down her neck and disappeared behind her hair. At ten paces you wouldn’t see it. This close I could see the alarm in her eyes. But she was a professional and suppressed it. I smiled, feeling reckless, just to see what would happen. She smiled back.

“Are you all right?” I asked her.

“Yes, I’m OK.” Her accent gave her away; they must have flown her over from Israel. I decided to push my luck.

“That’s an unusual accent. Where are you from?” I asked.

She shook her head and smiled, like she’d heard that line before. “I’m OK. Don’t worry, it was nothing.” Her hand worked beneath her jacket. No doubt summoning help on the radio. I glanced to my right and saw the Arab-looking operative walking fast towards us from Charing Cross Road. He was muttering into his collar, restraining himself from sprinting. I thought I heard a buzzing from the woman’s ear, but I might have imagined it. I was in a mood to take this all the way, I didn’t care what the consequences were. Besides, what could they do in broad daylight? They were obviously just a surveillance team, nothing more.

“Maybe I could buy you a coffee—to apologize?” I said. “There’s a place just around the corner.” She shook her head and her companion reached us. Up close he definitely looked as Semitic as I did, but she didn’t, she was definitely Caucasian, probably Israeli, with that accent. He reminded me of the Arab-looking soldier who had picked me up outside Sabra on the day of the killings. Abu Leila had once told me about research that showed that Sephardic Jews and Palestinians were no different genetically. He said the research had been withdrawn after publication in an academic journal because of the outcry it had caused. According to one of his many monologues, the Palestinians and Arab Jews, the Mizrahis, were probably the original Jews, and the European Jews, the Ashkenazis, were later converts with no genetic link to the region. Could this man, standing not two meters away from me, and I be from the same genetic pool? I reminded myself that he was still an enemy. Even a neighbor can be your enemy, even a father or brother.

“My boyfriend,” the woman said, gesturing at him, putting on an apologetic smile. She moved over to him and put her arm through his. He had removed his earpiece and had tried to tuck it under his collar, without much success.

I raised my hands in apology and bowed my head in defeat. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Of course you would have a boyfriend.”

The man forced himself to smile, then they turned away and walked back towards Charing Cross Road. I followed behind quite happily, knowing there was probably one person behind me as well as the pale-faced man in the café. I followed them as they turned left onto Charing Cross Road and passed them as they crossed it to go into the café, just as the pale-faced man came out. It was straight out of the manual: one operator following behind and one on the other side of the road. This was the time to go underground and channel them behind me. I quickly turned into the entrance of Tottenham Court Road tube and, as soon as I was out of view, took the stairs three steps at a time.

A
fter much prevarication, I got back to Tufnell Park. I’d traveled by taxi, bus, tube and on foot, and it was getting dark when I made it to my room. I didn’t knock on Helen’s door as I passed it, figuring that she would still be out. Let her come to me, I thought, too tired to even think about what had happened between us in the bookshop. I warmed up a ready-made meal and ate it from its plastic container. It tasted like the plastic had leached into the food. I took three codeine and lay on the bed in the dark.

The codeine had long since converted to morphine in my brain when I heard a knock at the door. I couldn’t answer it, not without it being obvious that I was doped up. I heard Helen’s door close and a few moments later some music seeped through the wall. I wished I could make the wall disappear and for our rooms to become one. I considered knocking on the wall, but then I would have to get up to answer the door, which was physically impossible. I was content where I was, comfortably floating on my cloud. I would have liked Helen to be on my cloud. She would like the codeine, I thought. It could help her like it helped me. I thought of Mama and wondered why I had no siblings. Helen had no siblings, as far as I knew. Mama used to do everything for me—cook, clean, fetch me water when I was thirsty, make me a sandwich if I was hungry. She would wash and dry a particular shirt for me if I wanted to wear it that same day. Mothers here weren’t like that. I felt a bit embarrassed for Mama now. She’d seemed happy enough looking after all us men, but I now understood that she wouldn’t have complained even if she hadn’t been happy. Helen’s music took on a melancholy tone, it sounded like more of her jazz. It washed over me like a slow wave, making me sad yet not quite depressed; you couldn’t get depressed on codeine. Instead I was filled with an indistinct longing.

I had a dreamless sleep and was awoken by more knocking. I staggered from the bed, still in my now wrinkled clothes. I opened the door, and Helen was there in a towel revealing her long legs.

“Good morning, neighbor,” she said. She clutched the towel to her chest. “I’m having a bath and need someone to wash my back. Would you oblige?”

I didn’t smile, believing she was just trying to distract me from yesterday. “I haven’t had breakfast,” I said.

“Well, Mr. Grumpy, we’ll get breakfast afterwards. I’ll buy you some to make up for forgetting lunch yesterday. You can wash my back to make up for turning yours on me in the bookshop. What was that about?”

Before I could answer, the front door opened and closed downstairs and she gestured desperately for me to let her into my room. I closed the door behind her as someone’s feet hit the stairs. She stood inside the door and let the towel drop. I studied her body and listened to the footsteps arrive on the landing and go up the next flight. A door closed somewhere upstairs.

“Do you want to punish me, Michel? Is that it?” She moved past me into the middle of the room and turned her back to me. She looked over her shoulder, sticking out her behind. “Do you want to smack me?” She was smiling but I didn’t know if she was making fun of me or was angry or what. I was also getting aroused. Then her voice got softer and deeper and she lost the smile. “If you want to punish me, you can,” she said. She knelt on the chair, resting her elbows on the back of it so her behind was pushed out. I put my hand on her buttocks, then between her legs. She was wet and gave off a musky smell. She said something but I couldn’t be sure what because her face was turned to the wall and the words came from deep in her throat. I started to unbutton my trousers, overwhelmed with a need I didn’t even think of controlling.

“No, not there. Get on the bed,” I said. She got off the chair and lay on her back, her legs apart. I got on top of her in my clothes, undoing my trousers just enough to free myself. She lay with her arms either side of her head, as if she was being held at gunpoint. I was crazy with lust and anger. I took my weight with arms outstretched, like I was doing push-ups, my knees between her thighs, my hands pushing down on hers, our fingers intertwined. She grunted with her eyes half-closed, until I was done, which wasn’t long afterwards, and I flopped down onto her. I was panting and could hear my heart, or maybe it was hers, thumping rapidly. Her arms came around me and her hands stroked the back of my head. She whispered gently in my ear, “Do you feel better, Michel?” I nodded, my face in her hair. I’d attained a certain serenity that I couldn’t explain. I wanted to apologize, but I wasn’t sure what for. “Good. So do I—now let’s have that bath.”

I washed Helen’s back while I considered my next move. I hadn’t finished my report for Abu Leila, detailing my meeting with Ramzi, but I had more urgent news to report. Although I’d left him a message last night from somewhere on my circuitous route home, it was restricted to telling him that the “competition” were here but that I was not, as far as I could tell, known to them, apart from by sight. Of course I wasn’t sure of this. Ramzi could have told them what he knew about me, which, although little, was enough for determined professionals to trace me, given time. I needed a
tref
with Abu Leila, that was certain, a written report wouldn’t be enough. I continued to fret and worry at it like a scabrous wound.

“Whattya thinking about, lover boy?” Helen asked. She leaned back into me.

I turned my attention to her, to us, recalling her visit to the bookshop yesterday.

“I was wondering whether you had decided to go to Turkey?” I asked resignedly.

“Do you not want me to go?” Why was she asking me a question that she already knew the answer to?

“Does it make any difference what I want?” I asked.

“Of course it makes a difference,” she said.

“Then, no, I don’t want you to go.” She spooned water onto my knees with a cup she used to rinse her hair with. “But you tell me it’s important for your PhD, so you should go.”

“What are you worried about,
ma belle?
”

I started to wash her stomach and flat chest. “Zorba is my worry,” I said over her shoulder. “It’s the two of you in Turkey together that I worry about—lift your arms please.”

“You don’t trust me then.”

I soaped her stubbly armpits. “Him I don’t trust. You…” I rinsed her off with the cup. I wanted to tell her that she felt worthless, and that being with a man made her feel wanted and needed. But I wasn’t even sure if that was true.

“Me, I’m just weak,” she said. She laughed and turned around. “It’s my turn to wash you now.” She hadn’t told me if she was going to Turkey or not but I didn’t push it. I let myself be washed and went back to fretting over my pursuers.

I
n Paris, North African immigrants lived in sprawling suburbs, servicing, behind the scenes, the romantic Parisian vision portrayed in films and travel brochures. Of course affluent Arabs lived in Paris too, many Lebanese had second homes there, but they didn’t live in the same neighborhoods as their fellow migrant workers, and they frequented cafés and restaurants where they spoke French. West Berlin had Kreuzberg, where the Turks, Kurds and Arabs lived next door to anarchists and bohemians. When in Berlin, I would sometimes go to Kreuzberg just to hear the voices and smell the cooking to get a sense of home, a hint and flavor of the camp. I didn’t know anyone living there, of course, but I felt comfortable, relaxed even, just wandering about, soaking up the atmosphere. To do the same in London meant going to the southern end of Edgware Road and wandering into some of the food shops bringing a taste of home to those living in the area, but it wasn’t the same as Kreuzberg or certain parts of Paris.

The high-profile Arab community in London was a
moneyed
one that lived in some of the most exclusive property areas of the city. The poorer Arabs, like the Moroccans and some Palestinians, cohabited with other immigrants in East London, and, like their Parisian counterparts, made sure the hotels and clubs ran smoothly for their well-to-do brethren who came from the Gulf to shop, gamble and do business. A sense of affluence existed in Edgware that could be seen in the cars driven and the clothes and sunglasses worn, which made it a world away from Kreuzberg and Clichy-sous-Bois.

After leaving Helen to meet her friend Maria, I stood in a snack bar run by Lebanese twins on the Edgware Road. Although she had asked me to go along I wasn’t keen, or in the mood, to meet anyone new. I was savoring a grilled chicken pita covered in garlic sauce. I watched a group of middle-aged men sitting at a table smoking and, as Jack would say, putting the world to rights. Their accents made them Iraqis; they could have been in a street café in Baghdad were it not for the fact that they were exiled in London to escape Saddam Hussein’s torturers.

The owners of the café tried to strike up a conversation but I wasn’t having any of it; I was still worried about my encounter with the competition the day before. According to Abu Leila, the Arab community was riddled with informers and he was forever lecturing me on the dangers of trusting anyone. I suppose I probably shouldn’t have come down here.

“Sometimes you will be drawn to your own, but remember that they are the prime target for the enemy,” Abu Leila had said. According to him, people thought they were working for some Arab state when they were feeding intelligence back to the Israelis. “The competition are experts at this sort of dissemblance, Michel. They get people to think they are helping the cause when in fact they are doing the opposite.”

So there I was, drawn to my own yet unable to have a proper conversation. I was an outsider. They were a foreign people to which I no longer belonged, from a land from which I had been exiled. Exiled by Abu Leila. The truth is that the Arabs are a diverse people, both ethnically and
geographically
. True, we are united in many things, like our famed ability to welcome complete strangers into our homes and give them the last of our food. And there is a common language, at least in formal Arabic, a legacy of the Islamic empire—colloquial Arabic is another matter—and a common religion, if you discounted us Christians and a handful of Jews. But we are always lumped together, and sometimes, when it suits us, we pretend we are one people. There are other, more bloody, divisions within the Arab world, to do with religious factions, tribe, money, class and politics. I watched a Mercedes-load of young men in sunglasses cruise past, blaring Arabic pop music from open windows. Back in Beirut Mama would have been cleaning their rooms while they were out, making them tea when they were home.

I finished my sandwich and left, playing the innocent the rest of the afternoon, wandering around like a tourist and deliberately not taking any countersurveillance measures. I went to the cinema, and even into the National Gallery, before heading towards University College and the student union building where I was to meet Helen.

Gower Street is a dirty line of buildings blackened by years of bus fumes. Walking down it from Euston Square underground station, I passed the entrance to Russia House (MI5 headquarters, according to Vasily, who said they had their own door that led straight into the tube at Euston Square). Ramzi’s hospital was down a street on the other side of the road and Helen’s college just further down on the left. I walked past it, turned a corner and went into Waterstone’s, where I had bought my new copy of Primo Levi. I had plenty of time before I was to meet Helen and I wanted to make sure I didn’t tie my followers to her.

I spent an hour in the bookshop, looking out of the windows onto the street, browsing books in the art section, then moving to electronic engineering to see if familiar faces followed me around—the likelihood of someone else being interested in both art and electronic engineering seemed slim. Eventually I convinced myself that I was alone.

Leaving the bookshop, I crossed the road to the student union building. I hung around the empty lobby and watched for Helen through the dirty glass doors. I saw her and her tutor walking towards the building together and my chest seized up: so much for her being with Maria. They were deep in conversation and he was gesticulating as he talked. Why can’t we Mediterraneans keep our hands still? Helen was nodding her head, dressed in sandals and a summer dress. He was holding her attention, judging by her expression. They stopped on the other side of the road and she gestured to where I was. I thought I’d been spotted but she was just pointing to the building. Zorba started to say something but she shook her head and frowned. He took her hands in his and I like to think that she tried to shake them free. She said something to him and he shrugged and held out his palms in surrender. She laughed and they hugged each other, longer than I found comfortable. She had to pull away from him because he wasn’t letting her go, and I was about to go outside when they separated. He was laughing as she wagged a finger at him.

She crossed the road to come into the building while Zorba stood there watching her. I went down the hall
towards
the toilets before she came in, then doubled back so that she didn’t know that I had seen her with him.

“Michel! You’re early.” She grabbed my hands harder than necessary.

“Shall we go?” I said, gesturing to the door. Zorba’s bulk was still visible through the glass behind her.

“Why don’t we get a drink here first? I’m gasping.”

“I thought you hated the bar here?” But she was already heading for the stairs. I looked back through the doors, but the fucker was gone.